What happened? An Indian company called Tata took exception to a pornographic site in the US under the name of

bodacious-tatas.com

Was it because they did not like porn? No, it was not. They may not like porn, they say they don't. But the reason for their complaint against the site was that it contained their trademark Tata in its domain name. And that the owner of the site was deliberately stealing their customers away by using their trademark to seduce them into looking at porn. Huh? Yes.
So they started a case, as one can against domain/site owners, with WIPO, which is a United Nations organization to assist the trademark lobby in their endeavours. WIPO appointed an Israeli expert to be the judge in this case. He looked into the matter and came to the conclusion that Tata was right. He indicates in his decision that the owner of bodacious-tatas.com was very wrong in using the name Tata. Nowhere does he tell us, that tata is also a common, albeit slang word, in the US, especially in the South (so I am told) in any case. Did he not know? He did take the trouble to look up "bodacious" in Webster's. He quotes it. Why not try to ascertain the meaning of tata? Now suppose he did not find it in his dictionary. Did he not wonder why an American would set up a site using in its name the trademark from an Indian company, probably unknown to most if not all Americans?
There is a lot of talk in the decision of the judge about there being words in the webpage that made people who typed "tata" in a search engine, being directed to bodacious-tatas.com and not to Tata, the company. Did this judge try this out himself? If so, did he notice that a large number of pornographic sites (other than bodacious-tatas.com) are returned as the result for a query on "tata"? How come he did not find this unusual? Or did he simply decide to ignore what most Americans know: bodacious tatas are big breasts, large tits, or whatever you call them, with or without respect and love, desire and care for women.

Now what does this all mean? Is it really important? This one case is not in itself. The owner of the domain does not seem to have fought for it very much. (We have no evidence he did so far.) There are other words one can use for a porn site.
The precedence created by this decision is enormous though. Staying for the moment in the realms of porn: can a company called Dick close all sites that have "dick" in their name? Moving further: What about other words that have a common meaning? Can Ford close down a site called "houses-you-can-afford.com"? Or may the owner of the trademark Plymouth close down plymouth.co.uk?

The case of bodacious-tatas.com is not the only case in which WIPO has, against common sense as well as against the rules set up for domain name disputes (the UDRP), caused great concern. We have to stop them before they take away words that matter to us. Before our language is turned into trademarks for the benefit of a few large companies.

Tell this story, please, to your friends. Because it is not only sad, but also a laugh, really. It is time we laugh these trademark protectors in their face.